Measuring Your Customer's Views of Your Team

In order to find out how their customer’s viewed their performance, the high performing team carried out a Customer Values Assessment. They asked their customers the following three questions:

What values customers lived by themselves (personal values)

What values customers were seeing in the team (current culture)

What values customers would like to see in the team (desired culture)

The results of the Customer Values Assessment are shown in the following diagram. (Click diagram to enlarge)

You can compare the employee perspective (current culture values) with the customer perspective (projected brand values) by referring back to cultural values assessment for the high performing team.

What we see in this example is a good degree of alignment between the values of the culture and the values of the brand.

There are four matching values between how employees and customers view the organisation (current culture)—commitment, customer satisfaction, making a difference and continuous improvement (italics). The level of cultural entropy viewed by both groups is very low: 8 percent as viewed by employees and 5 percent as viewed by customers. In addition to the four matching current culture values, customers also appreciate the following values of the team: information sharing, partnerships, professionalism, customer collaboration, cooperation, open communication and shared values. This is an excellent result.

When we look at what customers would like to see more of from the team (desired culture results), we see that they are principally looking for more customer collaboration and continuous improvement (bold). These are both values jumps—although both values appear in the current culture, the number of votes for these values in the desired culture is more. They also want to see the team give more focus to innovation, strategic alliances, coaching/ mentoring, continuous learning and shared vision. The desired cultural values, which describe the needs of customers, are invaluable in helping the team prioritize their improvement plans for the future.

Finally, the top ten personal values of the customers help us to see what is important to them in their personal lives. Their priorities are making a difference and continuous learning. What this means for the team is that they should concentrate their efforts on providing more products and services that support their customers in their work, and provide them with new knowledge and information that enable them to grow and develop. This should be reflected in their website, newsletters and publications, as well as their social media interventions.